A previously untranslated gem of Surrealist prose poetry from the acclaimed French novelist.
In 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, wrote a series of prose poems that would come to represent the only properly Surrealist writings in his oeuvre. Surrealism provided Gracq with a means of counteracting his disturbing wartime experiences; his newfound freedom inspired a new freedom of personal expression, and he gave the collection an appropriate title, Great Liberty: "In the occult dictionary of Surrealism, the true name of poetry is liberation." Gracq the poet rather than the novelist is at work here: Surrealist fireworks lace through bewitching modernist romance, fantasy, black humor and deadpan absurdism. A later, postwar section entitled "The Habitable Earth" presents Gracq as visionary traveler exploring Andes and Flanders and returning to the narrative impulse of his better-known fiction.
Julien Gracq (1910-2007), born Louis Poirier, is known for such dreamlike novels as The Castle of Argol, A Dark Stranger, The Opposing Shore and Balcony in the Forest. He was close to the Surrealist movement, and André Breton in particular, to whom he devoted a critical study.
« La Presqu'île » est par excellence la nouvelle de l'attente , elle conte la journée d'un homme, Simon, attendant son amante au bord de la mer, dans le pays de Guérande. On ne verra de la bien-aimée, dont la venue reste incertaine, que cette présence lointaine, fantasmée , elle est moins femme réelle qu'image labile, changeant au gré de l'imagination et de souvenirs plus ou moins flous. Tandis que surgissent dans l'âme du narrateur tour à tour désir et angoisse, on voit se dessiner à nu ses sentiments véritables, loin de tout romantisme. Cet instant suspendu se colore de nostalgie, de regret, de sensualité, d'ennui, et prend le goût d'arrière-saison qui règne dans ce paysage abandonné, somnolent après la gloire et la lumière de l'été.
